Gloves can be made completely of waterproof material or can be rendered waterproof by the use of glove inserts made from waterproof materials placed within glove outer shells to render the combination waterproof. Waterproof gloves have become popular for use in outdoor sports and activities or for working in the outdoors under cold and wet conditions to maintain dry, warm, and comfortable hands. Truly waterproof qualities under quite severe conditions of weather extremes and usage are much sought after.
To insure that the glove or insert is really completely waterproof, the manufacturer usually tests for leaks. Such testing usually involves immersing the glove in a liquid, such as water. This test method, however, leaves a wet glove which must be dried before packing and shipping even if it is found to be totally waterproof. Such methods and the accompanying apparatus thus tend to be slow and not be very economical even when used en mass in batteries of testers.
To overcome some of the problems generally associated with wet testing, dry methods have been tried, such as the device for powdering and pinhole leak testing rubber surgeons gloves described by Isaacs in U.S. Pat. No. 2,543,911. A hollow elastic body to hold powder and to hold in place a surgeons glove was pressed to blow powder into the glove being tested and at the same time expand the glove under pressure to reveal any pinhole air leaks which could be visually observed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,306,448 to Rohde showed a means to close a container with a resilient plug, raise the gas pressure within the container, and measure any pressure decline associated with a leak by a pressure guage.
These methods work satisfactorily for rigid containers conveniently closed by resilient plugs or for very flexible materials, such as thin rubber gloves, when a hole will become large enough under pressure to be readily detectable and the product is cheap enough to be discarded if found to be leaky. They have, however, limited application for a wide variety of the gloves in the market place.